Four people were injured in Saturday’s strike, and eight were hurt on Friday, officials said in a news release.

This transition is not limited to things human. It reverberates through our entire energetic continuum: the Earth itself is having documented increases in earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, changing weather patterns, and extreme weather events; energy is dancing from the Sun as we’ve never seen before; even the Earth’s magnetic poles are on the move in accelerating fashion.

This is yet another manifestation of the full-spectrum energetic change we are beginning to experience. Yes, lighting strikes occur millions of times a day across the planet. But in recent months, the power of some of these strikes has clearly escalated. Single bolts are striking multiple people and are able to kill a hundred animals at a time. This is not usual.

The cause? It could be from the general increase in the power of storms documented here in several past posts. But it could also be related to this, based on the latest readings from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) satellite array called Swarm:

Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner…

Earth’s magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds.

So, yet another example of acceleration and energetic change. When one combines this with the idea of an electric universe–that is, one in which electricity is present everywhere, a view that is being proven by excellent work summarized at sites like the Thunderbolts Project–then as the magnetic field weakens, our environment is being stimulated in an increasing way by the emanations of the Sun. Researches such as Mitch Battros have for years been showing an extremely high correlation between geomagnetic storms that hit the Earth and an increase in earthquakes and storms in the 24 to 72 hours that follow, as he did again this weekendat his Earth Changes Media web site:

On August 1st, two M-class flares fired off from sunspot regions 2130 and 2127, both of which were located at the Sun’s central meridian producing direct hits to Earth.

Within 24 to 48 hours of these solar storms, four tropical storms; Genevieve, Bertha, Halong, Iselle – were either produced or elevated. Within an additional 24 hours, the NOAA Tsunami Warning Center a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit near Lorengau, Papua New Guinea at 00:22:03 UTC, August 3rd 2014.

1. If you are in the vicinity of a lightning storm, don’t mess with it. Ignoring the storm based on thoughts of the low probability of being struck by lightning may no longer be a wise approach.

2. Expect further acceleration in the trends documented at Thundering Heard: extreme weather, earthquakes, magnetic pole migration, and so forth, and take whatever measures, if any, you deem appropriate.

3. Expect an increasing effect from these energetic changes on society and on you, at all levels of your being.

Just over a year ago, the post What is the Transition? Part 1 presented statistics and charts showing that there is an acceleration in extreme weather events and geologic changes. And there have been several posts with specifics, including these:

This is a statistical update showing that this exceedingly important trend continues.

For starters, here is a chart from the world of yet another industry whose original intent–a way to spread financial risk that could overwhelm an individual to a wider community–has been perverted to massive investment pools from which any payment is not celebrated as a victory but is called a loss. Thus the chart of “Loss events worldwide 1980-2013” from the largest re-insurance company in the world, Munich Re. I use it so that any reader who might still be mired in “it’s just better reporting because of the internet” delusion about accelerating Earth changes–I heard of a person who still claimed that recently, so there must be more–can put that aside. So, not from the woo-woo world, but from the Mr. Gradgrind hard-nosed no-nonsense actuary-driven world where all things are calculated in currency and where the business model depends in great part on frightening people into buying more insurance than they need:

I added the cone lines highlighting the expansion of damaging floods (the blue portion of each bar) and storms (the green portion) from around 250 per year in the 1980s to around 700 per year for the last eight years. That’s a mighty clear indication of trend as opposed to outlier.

The chart does not show all damaging floods and storms, just those that caused losses for the insurance industry. The chart shows a similar acceleration in damages from “extreme temperature, drought, forest fire” (the yellow part of each bar).

It shows a fairly constant set of losses from geologic events, but this chart does not tell the true story of geologic events because, worldwide, very few have earthquake or volcanic eruption insurance, so there are relatively few loss events from these for the insurance industry.

There were no significant tsunamis in 2013, so my previous comment from the end of 2012 still seems appropriate:

According to data at the NOAA Global Historical Tsunami Database, which has records going back to 2000 BC, there have been 34 tsunamis with a wave height greater than twenty feet over the last 400 years. Six of those, or 18%, have occurred since the year 2000…In the Twentieth Century, there was a tsunami with a twenty foot wave height about once every ten years. In this century, it has happened once every two years, resulting in the deaths of a quarter million people despite the fact that none of these tsunamis struck a major city.

Sinkholes have continued unabated, though in the rain-drenched UK, there have been multiple large land movements:

it seems I would be remiss in not mentioning that meteor fireball sightings have been increasing dramatically in recent years. Confirmed sightings doubled from 2011 to 2013:

Do I report all this to frighten? Not at all. I report it because it is the reality in which we are living; because I have learned the hard way that standing firm in the face of nasty powerful trends is very high risk behavior and usually turns out poorly; and because I want those who read Thundering Heard–who are presumably open to the idea that the accelerating changes we are seeing in most fields of life are related and are very important for humanity and for each of us–to stay alive so that, after the collapse of the financial system, they are ready to help rebuild society based on principles that include wisdom, creative intelligence, and compassion rather than the rampant and self-defeating materialism that is disintegrating our precarious “civilization.” (The quotes around civilization refer to Gandhi’s remark: “What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”)

So as I say to my younger cats when they bound out the door at night to face the local wildlife: Be careful out there.

That title is a quote from the chairman of the UK Environment Agency informing people that there is no way the country has the money to save–that is, build flood defenses for–both city and rural areas:

What’s happening in Britain is a perfect example of what people in an increasing number of regions are facing: a relentless parade of major, deadly storms. Decades back, England was William Blake’s “green and pleasant land,” celebrated for its mild weather with the occasional major storm. Now it’s a rare week that doesn’t have 100mph winds strafing some part of the British Isles. Here’s a bit of high surf in Wales:

The bigger question is whether the UK Environment Agency will be able to save town or country. In my view, they won’t have the time or money to save either. How often do people have to hear about unprecedented winds, rain, and waves–storms that almost everyone now realizes are ramping up in intensity, not receding–before they move away from coasts, flood plains, and low-lying areas? Perhaps some few will move to high ground, but it’s almost certain that most will not. Most, even faced with complete destruction of their homes, show a Monty Pythonesque “bravado and derring-do” and vow to rebuild on the same spot, egged on by clueless newscasters and politicians. As someone who studies cycles, I conclude that, if every culture on the planet has, in their oral and written traditions, reports of floods that totally cleanse the land, there is a reason. And it isn’t because there was one really big worldwide flood. It’s that cyclically, repeatedly, the Earth’s surface gets an intensive cleansing. From the way we are treating the planet, isn’t it obvious why? If the Earth didn’t do this cyclic cleansing of its own surface, would there be any humans here at all? As I said: food for thought. I know many will reject such thinking. All I am suggesting is that eyes and minds be kept open to the steadily emerging evidence.

For example, the British storms have swept away the sand from many beaches. Here’s a story that the storms uncovered human footprints from 800,000 years ago. If that’s correct, then we could be talking about lots of cycles:

But something even more important might be emerging. For years, there have been some who predicted that when the Arctic sea ice melted, that the tremendous quantities of methane stored in the Arctic sea floor above Russia and North America would begin to be released into the atmosphere. The process would become an escalating feedback loop where the retracting ice reflected less sunshine back into space, the open water absorbed more sunlight, heating the water, forcing the ice to retract further, etc. Then the increasingly warming water would warm the sea floor, releasing the methane frozen there.

The methane release is considered to be important in the extreme because, as a greenhouse gas, methane is said to be twenty times more influential than carbon dioxide; and the amount of methane stored in the Arctic is said to have more heat-producing capacity than all of the other fossil fuels combined. Whether that quantity claim is perfectly accurate or not, it is agreed that there’s a lot of methane there.

The release of the methane would then accelerate the feedback loop by rapidly warming the atmosphere so that ultimately people would be calculating sea level rise in meters per decade rather than centimeters.

Now a multi-nation task force claims that there has been a dramatic increase in methane emissions in the Arctic. They say the process has recently escalated beyond their expectations. They believe a runaway feedback loop has likely begun and that the arctic could see an ice-free Summer by 2015 rather than the more generally-accepted predictions that this would not happen till sometime between 2030 and 2050.

Here’s an image showing, from left to right, the average minimum sea ice from 1979-2000; the previous record minimum set in 2007; and the new record set in 2012, from this link:

This gives an indication of the trend, though that trend also includes a persistent and significant thinning of the ice as well, which is not pictured.

Over the last year, those who monitor Arctic methane using aircraft flyovers say that large plumes of methane, some as wide as a kilometer, can be detected above both open Arctic sea water and cracks in the sea ice. This is a new development. Previously, only small plumes could be detected, and typically only near the Siberian coast where methane was escaping from melting permafrost on land. Strong methane emissions from the ocean floor can be seen in the 19 minute video Arctic Methane: Why The Sea Ice Matters. The video does an excellent job of explaining a lot of this and notes that, like many other places on the planet (see What is the Transition? Part 1), the Arctic is seeing an increase in seismic activity that could contribute to additional methane releases.

These folks are also studying how changes in the Arctic are causing or contributing to global weather extremes. While I was writing the What is the Transition series, one of the largest storms ever seen developed in the Atlantic, stretching from Canada to Portugal, Greenland to the Caribbean:

Because there was no human body count, the mainstream media ignored it, so few heard about this late-March megastorm. It did contribute to unusually wintry weather in the UK, killing many animals there.

Saturn also had a mega-storm, so some of the energies we are encountering are likely related to our Solar System, not just our planet:

And John Stevanovic continues to produce monthly video summaries of weather extremes, earth changes, meteors, and so forth. I do not agree with his “end of the world” belief—as stated previously, I think we are in a major transition that will ultimately result in better times for humanity—but John’s videos do show compelling evidence of the accelerating turbulence that is contributing to the change we are experiencing:

And if you are reading this in mid-May, 2013, you might wish to check in daily with Spaceweather.com. Sunspot AR1748 has already thrown off four X-class solar flares. Luckily, the CMEs (coronal mass ejections) from those flares have not been sent directly toward Earth, but the rotation of the Sun is bringing AR1748 into more direct alignment with the Earth in the coming days. Images of the four X-class flares are here.

I have made reference to “the Transition.” Before trying to describe its essence, it will be useful to first review aspects of the Transition, in other words, some of its identifiable characteristics. One aspect that runs through all of the others is acceleration, as you will see.

EARTH CHANGES

EARTHQUAKES

Below is a chart of how much shaking the planet has experienced from strong earthquakes for the last 30 years. This chart sums up the Richter values for all earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater for each year. The earthquakes are summed rather than simply counted so that larger earthquakes have slightly greater weight on the chart. To show the trend, the column for each year shows the 10-year average of all that shaking. The trend is unmistakable—things started to really scale up in the early 1990’s:

The data for this chart was assembled from a straightforward query of the USGS (US Geological Survey) database at their Global Earthquake Search page.

After the massive Japan earthquake and aftershocks of 2011 (it is worth watching this video graphical display of the world’s 2011 earthquakes, especially if you live in the Ring of Fire), there were fewer earthquakes in 2012. However, 2013 is off to a very fast start, as shown in part in this link from Feb 2:

And since that post on Feb 2, there have been an 8.0, a 7.0, a 6.4, and a 6.3 in the Solomon Islands, a 6.9 in Japan, and a 6.9 in Columbia.

TSUNAMIS

Earth doesn’t typically see a lot of large tsunamis, but their occurrence has ramped up fivefold in recent years. According to data at the NOAA Global Historical Tsunami Database, which has records going back to 2000 BC, there have been 34 tsunamis with a wave height greater than twenty feet over the last 400 years. Six of those, or 18%, have occurred since the year 2000:

Year

Location

Water Height

Deaths

2000

GREENLAND

50.0

2004

INDONESIA

50.9

226,898

2006

INDONESIA

20.9

802

2009

SAMOA

22.4

192

2010

CHILE

29.0

156

2011

JAPAN

38.9

15,854

In the Twentieth Century, there was a tsunami with a twenty foot wave height about once every ten years. In this century, it has happened once every two years, resulting in the deaths of a quarter million people despite the fact that none of these tsunamis struck a major city. The NOAA’s database shows that even a tsunami less than five feet in height can kill thousands. With 23% of the world’s people living in what is called the “near coastal zone,” tsunamis are likely the single most life-threatening Earth-change phenomenon on the planet.

VOLCANISM

Due to the great behavioral variations of active volcanoes, the tracking of volcanism is not as mathematically rigorous as that for earthquakes and tsunamis. There is a site jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian and the USGS that reports on volcanic activity in the latest week. Here is their list for the week of 30 January–5 February 2013:

New Activity/Unrest:

Colima, México

Etna, Sicily (Italy)

Paluweh, Lesser Sunda Islands (Indonesia)

Rabaul, New Britain

Reventador, Ecuador

White Island, New Zealand

Ongoing Activity:

Batu Tara, Komba Island (Indonesia)

Chirpoi, Kuril Islands (Russia)

Copahue, Central Chile-Argentina border

Karymsky, Eastern Kamchatka (Russia)

Kilauea, Hawaii (USA)

Kizimen, Eastern Kamchatka (Russia)

Lokon-Empung, Sulawesi

Sakura-jima, Kyushu

Santa María, Guatemala

Shiveluch, Central Kamchatka (Russia)

Tolbachik, Central Kamchatka (Russia)

So, their list is all from the Pacific Rim and Italy. According to some who track this carefully, after a total of 77 volcanic eruptive events for all of the year 2012, there were 44 volcanic eruptive events recorded just in the month of January 2013.

Here are some volcano-related headlines shown on the SOTT.NET Earth Changes page in just the last couple of weeks:

Does anyone on the planet need to be told that storms are ramping up in size, intensity, and frequency, resulting in unprecedented flooding? And that heat waves have taken on new intensities and duration? Is there anyone still claiming, “It’s just the internet, nothing has changed, we just have better reporting.”? Anyone making such claims would be well-advised to review the recent history of the global insurance industry. The venerable Lloyd’s of London almost went bankrupt in the mid-1990’s after 350 years of annual profits. They said they had to completely revamp their weather catastrophe calculations because the actuarial data on which they had relied for 300 years (!) was no longer applicable.

Below are some quotes from September 2010 on the web site of Munich Reinsurance, the largest re-insurance company in the world. Reinsurers sell insurance to other insurance companies to cover catastrophic losses:

Munich Re’s natural catastrophe database, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world, shows a marked increase in the number of weather-related events. For instance, globally there has been a more than threefold increase in loss-related floods since 1980 and more than double the number of windstorm natural catastrophes…

Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Centre: “It’s as if the weather machine had changed up a gear.”

Heavy rain and flash floods are affecting not only people living close to rivers but also those who live well away from traditionally flood-prone areas.

And then things accelerated further. By October 2012, Munich Re reported that the numbers were even larger. They reported that weather-related loss events in North America had grown fivefold over the past three decades, and that there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.”

There are literally thousands of headlines available to demonstrate this idea further, here are just a few:

The temperature forecast for next Monday by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is so unprecedented – over 52C – that it has had to add a new colour to the top of its scale, a suitably incandescent purple.

To give you an idea how rare tornadoes are in Italy, four tornadoes in total were recorded in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, three were recorded in the 20th century and four were recorded since 2008 alone, with two of those coming in 2012.

And the damage is not limited to single instances, it is cumulative in many areas, for example, the US East Coast:

“We have left our coasts sitting ducks, and Sandy destroyed these natural protections,” she said.

In the space of a few hours, Sandy blew through the sand dunes that had served as natural protections for communities up and down the Atlantic coast.

“Basically these dunes build up over geologic time, and yet the superstorm wore them down over a couple of days, and it is going to take geologic time again to build them back up,” McNutt said.

For those who are more video oriented, this youtube poster does a good job of grabbing news video of weather extremes and earth changes from around the world each month. These can be useful to watch since they can remind just how quickly, under the tremendous distraction of daily life, we forget what’s been happening:

The November installment includes Superstorm Sandy. Since the news media typically won’t cover a weather story unless there is a body count to report, few are aware that Lower Manhattan in New York City is still seriously impaired, with skyscrapers running from emergency generators on the street because their basements are still flooded.